Serge Gainsbourg

France Gall has one of the best stage names ever. Often dismissed as a mid-1960s “baby pop” singing “doll” of the immortal and twisted Serge Gainsbourg, she was born Isabelle Geneviève Marie Anne Gall on 9 October 1947 in Paris, France, and managed to create (or was given) a galling Gallic name that James Joyce would have been proud to have coined. Gall was (is?) a popular French “yé-yé” singer.

I love France Gall’s song, “Laisse tomber les filles” (“Stop messing around with the girls”), written by Gainsbourg, and the pre-video video of the song above, from 1964 (age 17!), is wonderful, like a time capsule from a vanished world. Possibly the first example of really great terrible lip-synching.

Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
One day you’ll be the one who’ll get dropped
Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
One day you’ll be the one who’ll cry

Yes, I have cried, but that day
No, I won’t cry
No, I won’t cry anymore
I will say that you deserve it
I will say it serves you right
I will say it serves you right

Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
That will play a bad trick on you
Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
You’ll have to pay for it one of these days

One cannot play without being backfired
With an innocent heart
With an innocent heart
You’ll see what I feel
Soon
Soon

Chance forsakes
The one who knows nothing else
But leaving wounded hearts
You’ll have no one
To comfort you
You’ll deserve it!

Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
One day you’ll be the one who’ll get dropped
Stop messing around with the girls
Stop messing around with the girls
One day you’ll be the one who’ll cry

For your whining
There will be no one else but you
There will be no one else but you
And then you’ll remember
Everything I said now
Everything I said now

The Secret World of Serge Gainsbourg (Vanity Fair, November 2007): “Serge, who had big ears that stuck out and who was considered ugly, often said he wished he had looked like the American movie actor Robert Taylor, but also said, ‘I prefer ugliness to beauty, because ugliness endures.’ He started to smoke and drink at 20, when he went into the army. His sister says his cynical persona was always a defense: ‘When you feel weak, you attack.’ He showed talent as a painter and attended the Académie des Beaux-Arts, but eventually realized he had to earn a living, and said he ‘had fear of the painter’s bohemian life.’ Like his father, he played piano in clubs, then branched out to write songs. He won the 1965 Eurovision contest with a song he wrote for the cutesy pop star France Gall; he then wrote a sexually sly song for her, which she thought was about sucking lollipops. He started to write successful songs for others and then, later, himself. He wrote and directed 4 movies and acted in 29. He became really famous at 40 with the orgasmic ‘Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus,’ then even more so with songs that ranged from lush and romantic melodies to Surrealist poetry to caustic and dark concept albums. He used American words in his songs—’blue jeans,’ ‘flashback,’ ‘jukebox’—and studied the Ford Motor Company catalogue for phrases to use in his song ‘Ford Mustang.'”